Menu

Author Archives: nickcarver

Drawing on inspiration from Visual Art with Chelsea, Grade 1/2 have created film music to describe what can be found in the desert. Sticks, Stones, Snakes, Lizards, Tumbleweeds, Dead Trees and Vast Open Spaces are just some of the things the students chose to recreate using anything and everything they could find in the music room. Some of my favourite music has been created in the desert, which is a place of seemingly infinite inspiration and mystery.

All of these soundscapes were performed live by the students while watching the accompanying video on the projector in the music room. Old school meets new school.

After having fun with exploring composition with shapes and visual patterns, Grade 3/4 decided that the best way to continue with this medium was to explore film composition. And what better film excerpts could there be than those from Disney’s Fantasia and Dumbo, two movies with fantastic music and animation! Using their class Ipad’s each 3/4 class split into four separate groups and began scoring the soundtrack for their films. The soundtracks were then performed and recorded in front of the class while watching the films on “the big screen”. An excellent level of artistic and musical maturity was demonstrated by ALL of the students involved. It was a true privilege to watch the students work on this task. Grab some popcorn and enjoy!

Inspired by the fantastic visual artworks created with Chelsea of The Northern Lights, the Preps decided that they would like to be able to represent the colours they could see with sound. Each class selected certain instruments that they played in specific ways to represent the different colours in the Aurora Borealis. After some rehearsal, they then performed these soundscapes while watching the video as I recorded their performance. I think you’ll agree that this shows great maturity and commitment for Prep classes, particularly with not making any “voice noises” while we were recording. I also think you can really hear the different personalities of all of our Prep classes in the music we hear them create. Have fun watching and listening!

Grades 3 and 4 have been exploring composition using visual patterns and shapes to inspire sounds, playing techniques and articulation on various instruments. They have also been listening to and watching orchestras perform 20th century compositions by Edgar Varese, Dmitri Shostakovich and Charles Mingus to further inspire them to create weird and wacky sounds! By using distinct shapes such as spots, stars, squiggles, splats and sharp angles, each group of students has been able to create their own unique compositions. We will be exploring this further as we delve in to film composition using acoustic instruments in the following weeks.